Christmas

Cookies With Santa
Earlier in the month Santa came to Laura's school. The kids got to see Santa run around the gym and eat cookies. Aaron wasn't really interested in sitting on this weird guys lap.
We had a really great Christmas this year. It seems each year is more fun as the kids get old. This year they were bursting with excitement which makes it that much more fun for us the parents. Chris had Christmas Eve through the weekend off and that was really awesome.
Our avid Buckeye Fans finally got shirts. Laura has been asking me all fall if she could get a Buckeye shirt. She really wanted to wear it on Fridays during football season.(That is what eveyone does). So we finally gave in. When in Ohio do as the Ohioans do I guess. She missed football season this year but she will be ready for next season and so will Steven. The shirts are the first thing they wear as soon as they are clean again, so hopefully they aren't worn out by next fall.

I got a new down coat from Chris. I guess I had been really good this year. The coat is awesome. I got to try it out the next week when i had to rescue Chris off the freeway when his car broke down. It was freezing but my down coat kept we warm through it all. I just wish it was longer because my tush froze.
There are a lot of things we should have taken pictures of but I guess we were to busy playing to take pictures.

Trip to Lexington

December The above photo is a Christmas tree inside the Horse park museum. I'm having trouble figuring out how to type above my first picture. I don't usually have this problem so I don't know what the deal is. Fee free to share if you know the answer.

December was a great month for us. Chris had a light schedule and a vacation week in addition to four days around Christmas. For his week off we mostly just filled the days with appointments and spent time with the kids. I volunteered in Laura's class two of the days. She loves it when I come and I love it too. On Thursday after Laura's school party we went to Lexington Kentucky to visit friends there. They lived in Hershey when we did and now they are doing a residency in Ophthalmology there. It turns out the Lexington is the horse capital of the world. Chris and I questioned that when we saw it on their website but we learned that they don't mess around when it comes to Horse racing. To get our Lexington experience we went and saw the Lexington Horse Park. We had a lot of fun and we brought along our friends daughter which kept the kids entertained much longer then they would have had she not been there.

This is Steven petting a really tall retired race horse.
Aaron loved the horses but what he really loved the most was the cat that was running around the barn. He chased all around and growled at it, poor cat.
You can't tell very well from this picture but this is steven kissing the pony. He even convinced Londyn to kiss the pony too unfortunately the camera missed that moment. There was no convincing Laura that that was good idea.
Couldn't miss a photo shoot on this ginormous chairs.
The kids are enjoying a snow storm in the kitchen created by stuffing.

1. The snow storm wasn't all Bryn had up her sleeve to entertain these kids. She had them make puppets and then they put on a puppet show. After the kids were in bed we played a few games of Settlers. It was overall a great trip, great fun, great food and great company.

Thanksgiving

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This year for Thanksgiving Chris was on call. That means that he worked all day, all night and half of the next day. After he gets home he obviously needs to crash for the rest of the day. So he was pretty much gone for Thanksgiving. So I decided that I would to my cousin's house in New Jersey for Thanksgiving. That is were we went when we lived in Hershey because then it was only a three hour drive. From Columbus it was about nine. I had been wanting to go and visit Hershey so this was the perfect opportunity. We stayed with some friends in Hershey and had a really great time visiting with them. The first thing we did when we rolled in was go Chocolate World. The kids remembered Chocolate world and were so excited to go. After the ride they said. "Okay now we got get ice cream." We also got a few other things we wouldn't normally get. I would have to say that is the most fun we ever had at Chocolate World because the kids were sooo excited to be there.

This is the bench we always sit on to eat our candy we just got from the ride. Laura took us right to it.

They had a lot of new and different things going on that I hadn't seen before. This Reese's race car was one of them.


After Hershey we drove North to stay at my Uncle's house in Tannersville PA. We had a great time there. Then on Thanksgiving day we drove over to New Jersey. From my Uncle's house it is only a 1 hour drive.


Thanksgiving at my cousin's house is about as good as it gets. There is fancy cheese and crackers, fruit and ships to snack on all day. They have a huge basement full of toys, and awesome kids.


This year's activities even included a pinata. At the end of the day we drove back to my Uncle's house. The next morning I got up from there and drove home. I think it was about 8 hours from there. It was really a lot of driving but my kids did awesome. We only stopped twice. Even Aaron didn't give me any problems. The drive was very scenic until of course I got into Ohio. The whole trip made me miss Pennsylvania for a lot of reason but I was happy to be home and finally have a few days to spend with Chris. He really missed us even though he was at work. It was a bummer of Thanksgiving for him but there wasn't any thing I could do about it except make a great one for the kids and I.

Pumkin Carving and Trick-or-Treat

Better late then never. Here is this last October's Halloween fun.


Steven surprised me this year when he picked out this parrot costume. I couldn't believe he turned down Spiderman for the parrot. This is coming from the kid who tells me when he grows up he will be the first real super hero since all of the superheros now are just for pretend. Honestly i think it was the tail that sold him on it. Once he saw that there was no tuning back. it was a fun and original costume. He was the only parrot I saw trick-or-treating.

Laura chose the flower costume not because she liked it but because she thought it looked comfortable and warm and she really didn't want a dress of any kind. That is our Laura always thinking practically. It turned out somewhat of a dissapointment because she said it was itchy.

Lead's Farm

As always it has been months since I've gotten around to blogging. I wanted to post some of our fall fun before I posted Christmas since this is also the family scrapbook. In October we went to Lead's Farm. It was really cold but we bundled up and had a great time. Our friends met us there so it was double the fun.

The corn box is always a big hit. Aaron thought he had died and gone to heaven. They also play in the barn with all the hay and slides for a long time.
Can't get enough of the Banana Bus. We rode about 4 times before we were all done.

Last year Laura and Steven's legs were too short to peddle these but this year they both could do it and if other people weren't waiting for a turn they would have rode them a lot longer. When I asked them what their favorite thing was at the end of the day they both said the zip line.